"if you think childlike, you'll stay young. If you keep your energy going, and do everything with a little flair, you're gunna stay young. But most people do things without energy, and they atrophy their mind as well as their body. you have to think young, you have to laugh a lot, and you have to have good feelings for everyone in the world, because if you don't, it's going to come inside, your own poison, and it's over" Jerry Lewis
"I don’t believe
in the irreversibility of situations" Deleuze

Note on Citations

The numerical citations refer to page number. The source's text-space (including footnote region) is divided into four equal portions, a, b, c, d. If the citation is found in one such section, then for example it would be cited p.15c. If the cited text lies at a boundary, then it would be for example p.16cd. If it spans from one section to another, it is rendered either for example p.15a.d or p.15a-d. If it goes from a 'd' section and/or arrives at an 'a' section, the letters are omitted: p.15-16.

Previously Bergson discussed general and specific ideas. A cow (or some other herbivorous animal) is attracted to the color and smell of grass. So it is grass in general that attracts the cow. A plant likewise grows toward the sun or some other light source, and hence it is attracted to light in general. But in both cases, there can be any of a wide variety of grasses or types of light sources. So our minds have the ability to generalize an idea because we have a common practical response or attitude for a variety of possible specific stimuli.

When we recognize something, this involves us projecting an image from the past onto our current perception. Recall the circuit diagram. If current is moving toward the light bulb, at the same time current on the other side of the bulb moves away from it, around the circuit. In the same way, just as soon as we sense something, our mind projects upon those sensations our memories from the past. By this means we have a full perception, and then we can recognize what we see.

The process repeats with each new moment of perception.

And note that often times we respond with habitual actions to certain stimuli. For example, our feet automatically press the brakes when we see a red light. In a sense, all the previous contracted memories of red lights all contracted into that one perception. And because all perception-memories are contracted to every other one, our whole body of memories is always there whenever we experience something specific, like red lights. In fact, we did not notice any of them in our minds. Our bodies merely reacted. In that case, all our memory contracted tightly into our current perception. Recall Bergson’s cone diagram.

Plane P represents the automatic habitual actions we take. When we hit the brakes, all our memories contracted into that one action. We were not explicitly aware of any of these memories. So that act would be like being at the point S. Now, when we are asleep and dreaming, we are not acting. Yet our memories are explicitly vivid. In a way, they have expanded. So dreaming would be like being at the cone’s top “base” AB. When we are in that mode, our memories are the least contracted into a present perception/habitual action.

Bergson now explains that when we are thinking in terms of general ideas, we are moving up-and-down through the cone’s levels of contraction. So he has us now imagine the cone with thousands of layers, but his diagram will only depict two more.

So again, “at S is the present perception which I have of my body.” And across “the surface of the base AB are spread, we may say, my recollections in their totality.” Our general ideas “oscillate” between the top and bottom of the memory/action cone. The general idea at point/moment S “would take the clearly defined form of a bodily attitude or of an uttered word.” But at AB “it would wear the aspect, no less defined, of the thousand individual images into which its fragile unity would break up.” (210d) Normally, psychological theories of general and specific ideas only look at two things: 1) the active moment S where we perceive some specific instance (that we contractually generalize) and 2) the base AB where we have images that are the most removed from active experience. But according to Bergson’s model, general ideas are always found at some level in between. That means, we contract specific perceptions with all our memories, but we do so having some degree of awareness of the similar past images. When we automatically hit the breaks, we are not aware of all our previous perceptions of red lights, however we are actively contracting them to the present experience. And when we are thinking very abstractly about the idea of a red light, we do not notice that very slightly there is an imperceptible twitch of the leg, as though it were ready to brake at a moment’s notice.

So really when we actually perceive the red light, we are not so aware that flashing in our minds are memories of red lights. Hence it would be at a level closer to habitual motor actions where memories are more contracted.

But when we are thinking abstractly about red lights, the images are more expanded in our minds to allow us to consider them individually; however our bodies are also readying to respond as though we might need to break at any moment. So contemplating the abstract general idea would be found at a higher level.

...but still not at the highest.

Hence our general ideas are never found at the absolute extremities of contraction or expansion. Rather, the general idea

consists in the double current which goes from the one to the other, – always ready either to crystallize into uttered words or to evaporate into memories. (211b, emphasis mine)

Much of the previous material was a lengthy digression. Before that, Bergson was distinguishing habit-memory from image-memory. Habitual memories are like automatic mechanisms. For example, we memorize a passage. Then later, we initiate it, saying just the first word. Our bodies then continue reciting the rest of the passage, automatically. This feat was accomplished by contracting a long series of motor memories into one bodily habit. The other sort of memory involves our recalling images of previous perceptions. All present perceptions contract with these memories. Hence the past is always a real part of the present, although in virtual form. (195d) Bergson will now explain how the two are connected.

Our bodily habit-memory is always in the momentary present, and our image-memory is ever contracted with that momentary present. In this way the two “cohere closely together;” hence, “our body is nothing but that part of our representation which is ever being born again, the part always present, or rather that which at each moment is just past.” (196a)

So we contract images of our body with memories of past perceptions. Because our body for us is itself an image, we cannot think that it stores up all our memory-images. Thus past and in fact even present perceptions will never be found in the brain itself.

Our body-image is continually in a state of becoming. It serves as a gate-way:

It is then the place of passage of the movements received and thrown back, a hyphen, a connecting link between the things which act upon me and the things upon which I act, – the seat, in a word, of the sensori-motor phenomena. (196c)

The whole cone is the totality of the recollections that have accumulated to become our memory. The point S is our present, which unceasingly moves forward in time. We see also that point S – the bodily present – travels across a plane. Recall that at every moment of our perceptions, there is a contraction between our past memories and our present sensations. Together these produce a perception, which is always a combination of past and present. Throughout time, our sensations change and give us continually distinct data. We are to think of the point of contact between the cone and the surface as being the current perception. We learned that this perception really excludes nothing from our past. This is because every contraction contracts the whole past with the present. And so the whole past is continually present. It might seem that only certain memories are called to our present awareness, while the rest are stored somewhere. But for Bergson, they are always there in our perceptions, except we only notice the parts which are immediately useful to us. So we think of point S on plane P as the current moment when all of our past contracts with new images, but thereby the whole is colored or added-to. So as S runs along P, and thus as our perceptions continue their unceasing and changing course, the cone enlarges. In as sense, the new contracted images get ‘pushed’ up into the cone, making the whole thing expand. I suggest we imagine a leaky pen set firmly at one place upon an absorbent paper. The ink will continue to flow into that center-point. But as it does, it pushes the ink at the boundaries further outward. The longer we hold the pen there, the more the circle expands. Bergson’s cone diagram illustrates a similar principle. But what is important to notice is that:

a) The moment of present perceptions is always moving and changing, which adds new (contracted) images to our memories.

b) The entirety of all our memories contracts with the present perception, like the whole cone funneling down to its bottom point.

c) The continuous present is an instantaneous point in the immediate now; however, we do not experience it as such, because our whole past is always a part of the present.

d) The cone is absolutely real, and in fact really a part of our present perceptions. However, it is real in a unique way. It is virtual.

Our habits are bodily memories which have contracted many past perceptions into one (complex) automatic movement. So in that sense, it is a memory. However, because it acts spontaneously to present conditions, it seems to operate in the instantaneous present. So Bergson calls it “quasi-instantaneous” memory. All the previous memories serve as its ‘base.’ The point of a cone is still a part of the cone, just a very concentrated section. So on the one hand, in the case of perception, the past allows us to perceive things in the present, by sustaining them with contractions from the past. In this way, memories guide our perceptions and help them inform us of which present bodily-habit to enact, by means of recognition. So for example, if we are driving and see a red light, our past memories of stopping at red-lights inform our body to now hit the brakes. But on the other hand, our current perceptions give our past something to contract-with and be currently alive-through; they give the past a “means of taking on a body, of materializing themselves, in short of becoming present.” In order to recall something, our recollection must “descend from the heights of pure memory down to the precise point where action is taking place.” (197d) In this way, the present appeals to the past, which responds in turn. But at the same time, the past borrows from our current action’s sensori-motor elements “the warmth which gives it life.”

Just as soon as we sense something now, we at the same time project upon that sensation a memory from the past. Together they form a perception. Those contractions then immediately contract with the forthcoming perception. So in a sense, the past never goes away. And also, we are never in a pure instantaneous present.

Bergson now addresses the question of how these past perceptions are preserved in our memories. But he explains that perceptions never cease existing. They merely cease being useful. So all remembered perceptions have been contracted together already, and they all are found in this current moment that is bridging the past and the present. However, we only notice the ones that are relevant for attending to our current sensation.

If we think that perceptions happen within an instantaneous present, “the indivisible limit which divides the past form the future,” then we are speaking of nothing, really. For, if we consider the present in terms of what is about to begin to happen, then it is not yet existing. But if instead we regard the present as what is currently passing, then we are thinking of it as just having been, and thus also as not existing. (193d)

So our consciousness does not experience the present as being instantaneously now. Rather, the present for us involves the immediate past as well.

in truth, every perception is already memory. Practically we perceive only the past, the pure present being the invisible progress of the past gnawing into the future.

Consciousness, then, illumines, at each moment of time, that immediate part of the past which, impending over the future, seeks to realize and to associate with it. Solely preoccupied in thus determining an undetermined future, consciousness may shed a little of its light on those of our states, more remote in the past, which can be usefully combined with our present state, that is to say, with our immediate past: the resent remains in the dark. (194a.c)

We only notice the parts of the past that are relevant now. That makes us think that when we do not notice them, they must be stored somewhere else. But really, they are all always there in every perception we undergo, and we ignore most of them for practical purposes. (194d)